He takes one look at the green velvet armchair which has clearly been reserved for him and clambers directly over it, sitting atop the desk instead.

He puts his massive Jordan 4s on the chair, straightens out his custom suit and his white Furocity hat and glances round the room at the waiting press pack.

“I’m very well thank you,” he says in response to the usual pleasantries. “If you’d like to get going.”

His brother Shane, who has pulled up a chair nearby, joins in too, “Ask him what you want, ask for blood, get straight to the point.”

Generally, before two fighters face the world at the top table, where a host does most of the probing, the written press gets a chance to ask their questions away from the glare of the spotlight.

This set-up is generally known as a roundtable, but there was little room for furniture here. Fury was first up and, nevermind the table, eschewed even a chair. But Joshua, who followed 10 minutes later behind dark sunglasses, decided to sit down appropriately.

These two are used to all of this now, having had nearly 80 professional fights between them, but there is no denying that this one felt different for just about everybody involved.

“It does feel a bit surreal,” Fury says. “This has finally arrived, more than 10 years in the making. It’s here and I’m excited.”

Ditto the whole of the British sporting public with Fury and Joshua finally set to meet. What’s more, there will be no transatlantic flights required, only a quick trip across the Severn Bridge into Wales.

It had looked at one point like this fight was about to be ripped away from us having been agonizingly close to completion until all the threads were pulled together at the 11th hour. It does not bear thinking about how much damage it would have done to British boxing had this one never happened, but now there are just 10 weeks to go.

Fury carries on: “There has been a lot of back and forward, but however frustrated you are times that by one million and that’s where I was with it.”

But all of that is water under the bridge with the finer details smoothed out. Fury and Joshua can look forward to sharing the spoils from the richest fight in British history. It is little wonder, therefore, that both were exceptionally upbeat in that tiny room.

Joshua has been guarded in the past and Fury can be very prickly indeed on the wrong day, but there was none of that this time. When they made it out into the main hall for the press conference proper, they even tried to arrange post-fight beer.

It is one of the strange truths of boxing that the combatants, who will attempt to render each other unconscious, need each other for the most lucrative transaction of their lives. They are the most violent business partners and it was clear, as they cheerily posed face-to-face, that these grownups with children of their own just cannot be bothered with grudges anymore.

It was hard to know what to expect from the press conference, which as Fury points out, has been more than a decade in the making when you really think about it. Some were aghast at the lack of edge between the fighters but there was no denying it was unlike any other boxing press conference I’ve ever attended, and that figure is in the hundreds.

It started with a request from Joshua for a minute’s silence, which was perfectly observed, weaved round everyone on the top table and to Turki Alalshikh, the fight’s promoter, who spoke from his position in the front row. At one point, even the fans, who were stationed in the upper balcony, were asked to provide questions, having shouted random insults throughout. When a question leaked through from an accredited member of the press, Joshua shouted: “No journalists!”

It was a strange one-off event.

“There isn’t another fight out there that can compare to this,” Fury says, and the truth is he's right. Sure showdowns involving Canelo, or the possible trilogy between Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol or David Benavidez-Jai Opetaia will always do numbers. Still, even after all this time, there is nothing quite like AJ-Fury — or Fury-AJ.

“It’s not too late,” Fury says. “It’s the icing on the cake of two great careers. “And that’s it, let’s go out swinging and may the best man win.”